Persona: A Man Who Loves His Country Music

I grew up listening to Buck Owens, Ray Price, Merle Haggard—discovered Dwight Yoakum later on. These songs are in me. At some point, I pictured a man on a barstool, feeling sad, his thinking laced with phrases from country songs. I let him have a say.

Side note: This poem is a sestina—six stanzas of six lines each, using the same end words in each stanza, though the order varies. This kind of repetition feels ideally suited to a voice that obsesses.

On a Barstool at the Double Down

This one is for Gary Meischen, with thanks to Buck Owens,
Dwight Yoakam, Ray Price, Merle Haggard—all the sad jukebox voices.

Excuse me. I think I’ve got a heartache—
a bruise so deep tonight that even whiskey
cannot cure what’s hurting me. Even you.
When you came back, you never meant to stay,
left me swayin’ on this barstool. Nothin’ but blue.
Close up the honkytonks, lock all the doors—

board up my cryin’ places, nail shut the doors
that I keep stumblin’ through. Stop up this heartache—
surely I can’t take another day. Been blue
so long, don’t need another shot of whiskey,
another migraine morning. Wish that I could stay
this hankerin’, live easy just one day without you

drumming on my temple bones. Without you,
let me wake to sunshine, let me walk right by the doors
that draw me here. Give me a place where I can stay
awhile, a pier along the Cayo, where heartache
is a distant throb. No siren song of Seagram’s,
but seagulls swooping overhead—an afternoon with skies so blue

the blues will drift away, the Bay a mirror, deepest blue.
If only for a minute I could break away from you.
Instead, this walled-in neon glitter, the wink of whiskey
warmin’ where I hurt, jukebox tunes a maze of mirrors, doors
and more doors, voices callin’, drenched in heartache,
voices sayin’ Hang on to your hurt, voices sayin’ Stay.

Really, though. Please don’t make me sta
inside this boozy loop a minute more. I’m sick of blue,
can’t hear another song that makes this old heart ache.
But then my shoes keep walkin’ back to you.
I drop a quarter in the slot, play Swingin’ Doors
and sing along, smoke-filled, doused in whiskey

regret. Bartender pours again, says You know whiskey
cures what ails you. Have another. Have a double. Stay
awhile. At five, I stumble through the doors
and out into a night just tilting into dawn, a hint of blue,
ink-wash blue lifting the sky, and right then I’m free of you.
The quiet whispers No more heartache. 

The whiskey purrs Let go of blue. Crosswalks
wink like closing doors. I feel myself release you.
My heartache murmurs Wonder if I’m here to stay.

Published in Caliche Road Poems (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024)